An Afghan soldier is seen in a guard tower at a military base as civilians gather outside Sunday in Panjwai, Kandahar province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan.

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The shooting spree, which has been widely condemned by American officials, comes as relations between Afghanistan and the West are tense after the burning of Qurans on a U.S. base last month. The Taliban has vowed revenge for this "inhumane crime."

Afghans pondered the motivations behind the incident and how it fits into larger questions about the American presence here.

"Of course, no one can close their eyes to what the foreigners have done for us. In the country we have more development. Overall, we would not say that they're bad people," says Abdul Qadir, a high school teacher in Lashkar Gah, the capital city of the south's restive Helmand province.

Citing another incident in which NATO forces killed Afghans at a wedding party, he says, "If foreigners give us everything and make us rich but they try to kill us, then what is the need for having everything?"

There are still many questions about what happened in the villages of Balandi and Alkozai in Panjwai before dawn Sunday. The Pentagon has declined to identify the shooter, but some details of the shooting were emerging Monday.

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A Pentagon official who spoke on background because the killings are under investigation said the villages were about 800 yards from the small military base. An Afghan guard reported the suspected shooter — a 38-year-old staff sergeant and 11-year veteran — leaving the base but probably would have had no reason to challenge him, the officials said.

The official said victims of the shootings, which occurred in three houses, were as young as 2. The death toll is 16, and it may rise as some of those who survived were wounded critically.

Shortly after the shootings, by about 4 a.m., villagers began bringing bodies and the wounded to the base. The soldier was noticed missing and troops put "two and two together" and quickly realized he was the likely suspect, the official said.

The suspect could be court martialed in Afghanistan and be subject to the death penalty. The murders were premeditated, the officials said.

Another senior Pentagon source said the shooter acted on his own and described him as a "troubled individual" but that the signs of his problems were not obvious.

Plans call for the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces while turning over security to the Afghan government in 2014. The pace of the Afghanistan withdrawal is one of the topics of this week's visit to Washington by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Afghanistan also will top the agenda at the G-8 and NATO summits Obama will host at Camp David.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday the killings will not affect the timetable of the U.S. withdrawal.

Obama — who apologized to Afghanistan for the burning of Qurans less than a month ago — said Sunday, "I am deeply saddened by the reported killing and wounding of Afghan civilians."

"This incident is tragic and shocking and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan," the president said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack .

"This is an assassination, an intentional killing of innocent civilians and cannot be forgiven," Karzai said Sunday.

Villagers described how they cowered in fear as gunshots rang out while the soldier roamed from house to house firing on those inside.

"He was walking around taking up positions in the house — in two or three places like he was searching," said 26-year-old witness Mohammad Zahir, who watched the gunman while hiding in another room.

"He was on his knees when he shot my father" in the thigh, he told The Associated Press. His father was wounded but survived.

Zahir recounted the harrowing scene in his family home when the soldier came in before dawn.

"I heard a gunshot. When I came out of my room, somebody entered our house. He was in a NATO forces uniform. I didn't see his face because it was dark," he said.

Zahir said he quickly went into another room in the house, where animals are penned. "After that, I saw him moving to different areas of the house - like he was searching," he said.

His father, unarmed, then took a few steps out of his bedroom door, Zahir recalled. "He was not holding anything - not even a cup of tea," Zahir said. Then he fired.

"My mother was pulling my father into the room. I put a cloth on his wound," he said.

After the gunman left, Zahir said he heard gunshots near the house again. He stayed in hiding for a few minutes to make sure he was gone.

The soldier accused in the shooting was in custody at a NATO base in Afghanistan.

The Taliban said in a statement on its website that "sick-minded American savages" committed the "blood-soaked and inhumane crime" in Panjwai district, a rural region outside Kandahar that is the cradle of the Taliban where coalition forces have fought for control for years.

The militant group promised the families of the victims that it would take revenge "for every single martyr with the help of Allah."

Protests that followed the Quran burnings last month ended with almost 40 dead, including four U.S. servicemembers, but as of Monday, there were no major demonstrations in response to the shootings. Nor were there any violent demonstrations in response to a recent video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Afghans.

"Overall, this was a really bad incident, especially looking at the photos of the kids who were killed," says Jalil Babak, an Afghan soldier stationed in Nangarhar province. "But this is a conflict, and anything can happen in war. This is not the first time a soldier or policeman, foreign or Afghan, has done something like this. In the past, many times the Afghan security people opened fire on their foreign colleagues and killed them. This is not a new issue."

He says the support of the U.S. and international community has been indispensable to Afghanistan, and he hopes people will not focus to heavily on this issue and risk losing international backing.

As the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan shifts from war fighting to small groups of U.S. troops training Afghan security forces in their communities to counter insurgent groups like the Taliban, American troops will be more isolated and vulnerable, according to Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

U.S. officials who want to support a continuing war effort need to educate Americans "that this is war," he said. "We're going to see incidents like this and we're also going to see that this is the new IED (improvised explosive device) for the Taliban and Haqqani network -- to push as much strife between Afghan troops and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) and NATO as possible."

Michael O'Hanlon, director of research at the Brookings Institution, said the shooting is the wost incident of its kind by a NATO service member in Afghanistan, and could precipitate a significant reaction by Afghan civilians and a change in Afghan policy makers' attitude toward NATO.

The shooting of multiple civilians at a Baghdad intersection by the security firm Blackwater "affected everything" in Iraq, including the Iraq legislature's unwillingness to give immunity to U.S. service members there, which led to an early departure of NATO troops last winter, O'Hanlon said.

"America is saying they are the defenders of the human rights … but the things they are doing in Afghanistan are completely against human rights," says Abdul Rahim Ayobi, a member of parliament from Kandahar. Though it's clear the killings were not planned at a high level or part of the American strategy, he says, "it finally gives us the message that now the American soldiers are out of the control of their generals."

The issue could complicate negotiations between the United States and Afghanistan that would allow U.S. troops to stay beyond the 2014 deadline. Last November, leaders agreed at a loya jirga, or grand assembly, that any such agreement should make any international servicemember who commits a crime accountable to the Afghan courts.

Sunday's shooting has brought this issue into sharp relief once more. During a parliamentary session Monday, the legislative body condemned the action and called for the prosecution of the soldier in Afghanistan.

"The person committed the crime here in Afghanistan, and if he gets punished in Afghanistan, it will be a lesson for others, but since foreign soldiers are not prosecuted in Afghanistan, that's why they continuously commit crimes in Afghanistan," says Qazi Abdul Rahim, a member of parliament from Badghis province and a former judge. "America always says they are here for security and helping Afghans, but in reality, you see it's the opposite."

U.S. troops accused of wrongdoing in Afghanistan are subject to U.S. military law and proceedings, according to the Military Technical Agreement between Afghanistan and the United States.

One of the most difficult challenges for the immediate future may be controlling Afghan perception of the incident.

"This crime was an individual crime done by a single person. It is not the policy or strategy of Americans to kill innocent civilians, but still the public reaction will blame the government of America, not the soldier," says Kamal Safai, a member of parliament from Kunduz.

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